Midweek Challenge Cup -- Kyoto National -- November 15, 2006

This week's racing brought the action to Kyoto, with drivers once again getting into the machine that
is the FOX. Those of you familiar with this particular series of circuits will know full well the
dangers racing here, fast corners with technical chicanes and banked curves. This Session saw the
National configuration in use for the first time in the Midweek Challenge Cup and it was destined
to provoke the best and worst from the competitors.

Qualifying -- With Qualifying underway at 8.30pm GMT, racers had 20 minutes to get a good lap in.
It wasn't long before the times dropped below the 1.40 barrier with ocr.Vince making the first breakthrough
at 1.39.84, followed by [dSRC]eckh at 1.39.73, and Senna making a strong showing with a 1.39.87. With an
almost full grid of drivers, things were going to be interesting. Vince was quick to respond to eckh's time
posting a 1.39.50 allowing him to retake the pole, but eckh pushed the bar even higher mid session with
a 1.39.30. This proved to be the fastest time set in the session, with Vince managing to claw his time down
to 1.39.41 and Senna with a very respectable 1.39.84. The rest of the field swapped places and everything
was pretty damn tight in the top ten. Everyone looked to be prepared for the next two sessions or were they?

Race 1 -- 17 laps (Must pit)

With Practise and Qualifying stages over, it's time to get the show on the road and racers
take their relevant positions on the grid. The green light comes and off they go headlong
into T1 with the top 6 all jostling for an advantage going into the potentionally deadly chicane. [dSRC]eckh
holds his place, ocr.Vince takes a wider line to get more exit speed, but Senna tries to be too fast and with
tyres still cold can't slow down enough. He locks the brakes, and slides slightly offline, just enough to
give ocr|Vince a knockout blow heading him deep into sandcastle country with nothing but a bucket and spade.

A little further back and we see ZWR|T.Laas's rear getting a little wild and he cuts into the path of vMaxKeiran.
He seems to control the impact at first but his car is pitched to the right coming out of the turn and ZWR|M.Morris
is too fast and shunts him from behind. Meanwhile, ZWR|R.Hoiting and ZWR|T.Laas sneak through on the
inside closely followed by [dSRC]Grivage and [dSRC]dodo. ZWR|M.Morris's car is now spun 180° and [SR]Tongey
finds himself heading straight into the side of it, but he'd braked enough to minimise any serious damage
or loss of control a...